Recently I went for a drive down memory lane. Well, more like “memory slums” to where we lived during the latter part of the war. This is where my mother, father and I were moved to in 1944 because our own home had been damaged by bombs and was considered unsafe.

The house was in worse state than the bomb-damaged one we had left. There were six terraced houses with and entry separating them. Every two houses had a small yard with one outside toilet which we had to share. The houses had gas lighting, there was no electricity, and the water supply was one cold water tap in the kitchen. The bathroom was a tin bath in front of the living room fire, filled with hot water from the copper in the outhouse. Believe it or not, but these houses are still occupied in 2011! I should imagine that they have been modernised and now have an inside toilet and bathroom, but externally they don’t look much different.

Now that you get the picture I will tell you of my near-death experience while living in this dirty, dank unheated house. I was 7 years old, but I still remember the following incident in great detail to this very day.

Practically every night we suffered air raids with the constant noise of shell fire, bombs bursting nearby and bits of red-hot shrapnel flying about. One night when it was relatively quiet we had one German plane over-fly our street at low altitude. My dad said not to worry; he was probably taking photos of the damage to brag about in the officer’s mess back in Germany.

‘BUTTERFLY’ BOMB Anti-personnel device These were stored in the aircraft folded, when released the wings opened and rotated the shaft into the bomb thus arming it. As these bombs were so dangerous most were destroyed on the spot ( if they failed to explode). They were painted with bright colours, making them atractive to children, who were told never to touch them if they had landed and not exploded.

Shortly after this as I was preparing to go to bed I had the urge to go for a number two (to be polite), so I lit the candle to go to the outside toilet and groped my way across the yard and into the lavatory. As I sat there waiting for my bowels to empty I kicked something metallic on the floor. I lowered the candle and saw that it was something that looked like a fan blade. I just thought it was something dad or the neighbours had left there and paid it no more attention.

At last I managed to do my business, but instead of the usual plop-plop into the water the sound was more like splat-splat. I sat there for a while and glancing up I started to count the stars in the sky. Hang on! I was indoors and I could see the stars? I then realised that some of the slates and wood work had gone, and there was a bloody great hole in the roof. Looking down at the floor again I could see bits of wood and broken slates.

I jumped off the toilet and in the dim light of the candle I could see the bottom bit (the dangerous bit!) of a butterfly bomb covered in poo stuck in the bowl! Panic! They had told us about anti-personnel bombs at school and shown us pictures of various types so I knew that I wouldn’t have very long to live if I stayed in the lavatory. Pulling up my trousers as I ran back to the house, I burst into the kitchen and shouted
“There’s a bomb in the lav!” My dad said “Don’t talk stupid! Now get to bed”.

“But there is! I just poo’ed on it!”

“I won’t tell you again, GET TO BED! One of these days you will get yourself into trouble telling whoppers like that”. SMACK! “Ouch, that hurt!” I replied, “But it’s true, go and look!”. So he did.

That’s when the ‘shit hit the fan’ (pun intended). He came back into the house and said to mum, “Quick! Get out and go to the air-raid shelter NOW, and shout loudly to everybody that there’s and unexploded bomb at number 37 and I’ll go the other way and do the same until I get to the phone box”.

He phoned to police who in turn called out the army bomb disposal team. When they came they had to un-jam a live poo-covered bomb and carry it to the local recreation ground when they exploded it with an extra charge.

We learned afterwards that it was a dud. It was full of sand! My dear old dad said that they, the Germans, used to drop dummies along with the live ones in order to cause panic and confusion. I mean, explosives are expensive, and Adolf couldn’t afford a lot because he was losing the war at that point. He certainly caused panic in our street that night with 1 kilo of german sand!

The army officer told me afterwards that it was impossible to tell the dummies from the real ones, and the only way was to hit them hard with a spade. If it didn’t go off, it was a dummy, but if it did. . .well, you would need to buy a new spade at the very least! Being a little lad I believed what he said!